{"id":245525,"date":"2025-10-28T04:11:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T04:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/245525\/"},"modified":"2025-10-28T04:11:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T04:11:09","slug":"f1-news-2025-oscar-piastri-ex-coach-kim-keedle-comments-on-suspicious-championship-flip-lando-norris-battle-at-mclaren","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/245525\/","title":{"rendered":"F1 News 2025 | Oscar Piastri ex coach K\ufeffim Keedle comments on ‘suspicious’ championship flip, Lando Norris battle at McLaren"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oscar Piastri<\/a>‘s ex-performance coach has lifted the lid on McLaren<\/a>‘s fight for the championship, admitting that he doesn’t “buy into conspiracy theories” about team sabotage.<\/p>\n

Kim Keedle was Piastri’s performance trainer from 2020 in junior categories to the end of the 2024 season in the main game.<\/p>\n

He said that the recent battle between teammates is simply how Formula 1<\/a> goes and Lando Norris<\/a>‘ fight back to contend for the drivers’ championship was to be expected.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Ex-Roosters star’s ‘heartbreaking’ diagnosis<\/a><\/p>\n

READ MORE: Are F1 conspiracy theorists right about McLaren? Probably not<\/a><\/p>\n

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“There are always swings and roundabouts in F1,” Keedle said on SEN.<\/p>\n

“They are both strong drivers and Norris fighting back was expected.<\/p>\n

\"Oscar<\/p>\n

Oscar Piastri of McLaren prepares to drive in practice ahead of the F1 Grand Prix of Mexico.\u00a0Anadolu via Getty Images<\/p>\n

“We have come off a few races that are not Oscar’s strengths, but he will be fine. It’s not easy to win a championship. I’m confident he will get it done.<\/p>\n

“I know how McLaren operates and they have handled this well internally. I understand how it might look suspicious externally.”<\/p>\n

Drivers are constantly having to change and manoeuvre themselves around a car that is developing rapidly throughout the season.<\/p>\n

Keedle confessed that this can have a positive or negative impact on drivers and their results as they get to grips with the new feel. <\/p>\n

“The difficult thing with F1 [is that] throughout the season there is so much development going on,” he added.<\/p>\n

“At the start [of the season] McLaren was the fastest car and Red Bull<\/a> have caught up.<\/p>\n

“Mercedes<\/a> and Ferrari<\/a> come in and have their strong races too.<\/p>\n

\"Charles<\/p>\n

Charles Leclerc holds up his trophy after the Formula 1 F1 Grand Prix of United States.\u00a0Icon Sportswire via Getty Images<\/p>\n

“Throw in some maybe lost confidence and poor races for Oscar, I don’t buy into the conspiracy theories<\/a>, I think it’s all above board and fair.”<\/p>\n

Piastri is well known for being reserved in the public eye of the sport and his ex-coach hinted that driving is the Australian’s forte, not all the public facing duties outside of the car.<\/p>\n

“Mentally he will be coping well [with the championship fight],” he said.<\/p>\n

“He works hard on dealing with that. He understands this is a big part of performance.<\/p>\n

“It’s tough for him at the moment but all athletes have pressure, and you have to be able to deal with it if you want to succeed.<\/p>\n

“Managing demands around the drivers, it’s the hardest thing Oscar found when he first came in, all the extra things besides the driving.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A disappointed Oscar Piastri speaks in the media pen during the F1 Grand Prix of United States.\u00a0Getty<\/p>\n

“They’re all things that can take away from you as a driver, you have to learn to deal with these things.”<\/p>\n

Before Piastri, Keedle’s clientele included Haas’ Romain Grosjean<\/a> and the Melburnian lifted the lid on how drivers deal mentally with the near-misses and heavy crashes in the sport.<\/p>\n

Racing Bull<\/a>‘s Liam Lawson narrowly avoided a fatal crash<\/a> with two marshals on the track at the Mexico Grand Prix.<\/p>\n

“After a big crash that a driver has witnessed, or as they get older, fear starts to creep into the mind,” he said.<\/p>\n

“But as a general rule…they don’t get scared.”<\/p>\n

Piastri and his teammate Norris will return to the track for the Brazilian Grand Prix, with one point between them in the drivers’ championship standings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oscar Piastri‘s ex-performance coach has lifted the lid on McLaren‘s fight for the championship, admitting that he doesn’t…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":245526,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-245525","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-motor","11":"tag-motor-sports","12":"tag-motosport","13":"tag-motosports","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}